I haven’t written anything of substance for over a month. My heart has been in an incredibly barren and angry place. Everything I try to write comes off either whiney or selfish and that’s not where I am trying to go.
It’s no secret that Abigail and I are in a rough spot. It’s seems as though 2014 has been the year of “everything falling apart.” Each time that I felt I was back up on my feet, something else would happen and I’d get knocked back down. I’ve spent the better part of the year feeling sorry for myself and trying to will my way out of this situation.
The deeper into it I get the bigger the ache gets. I spent a good three weeks barely getting out of bed, not showering, and distracting myself with copious amounts of tv and gummy bears.
I slowly feel like I am pulling out of my funk. I spend more of my days reading, journaling, and painting. Not being absorbed in TV has helped dramatically. Being intentional and focusing on Abigail has also been a defining factor as motherhood is one of the biggest things that keeps me fighting.
Yet even though there is all of this, all of the people who have so graciously helped us out financially and otherwise and those deep soul friends who have stuck around and reminded me that I am brave, a warrior and have coconut balls. There is this deep sense of loss, of grief and of loneliness.
I am no stranger to these feelings, they have been bubbling under the surface for a really long time, only over the last year have they broken through the barrier I had been holding up and have made themselves known.
It seems so silly to say this that I hurt when no one comments on a facebook or instagram post. I see the gatherings of women on facebook and I feel on the outside, once again. I lived the majority of my life on the outside, looking in on people that seem to get one another, that seem to click and love each other. It feels easier on my heart to stay on the outside rather than risk feeling lonely and getting hurt.
This insecurity in relationships I assume stems from a lifetime of feeling insecure and being on the outside of everything. I spent more time alone as a child/teenager than I did with friends.
To really put myself out there and be vulnerable I would tell you that when I was in high school I would pretend like I was hanging out with my friends instead I was driving around, alone in the dark listening to The Eagles and Bette Midler.
I still feel those same old insecurities that I am not good enough to have friends, or that there is something inherently wrong with me, and that my whole mess is just too much for people.
So I slink on the outsides, I join groups but never say anything, I text a lot of people on those days I feel especially lonely and I snuggle with Buster, my sweet little service dog.
I don’t want to do this anymore, I want the loneliness to escape and slink away at the sight of my bravery (the ring I wear with the word engraved helps) I want to really embody the words that people speak over me.
Warrior
Brave
Fearless
Tenacious
Wild Woman
Those are the things I want to cling to, not that I don’t belong or that I am too much. I am pretty sure that most people feel this way at some time or another.
I know that a lot of my own feelings get in the way of this happening, my fear of being worthless, of less than valuable or “that depressed girl who is so needy”
Today, I am not going to allow those lies to worm their way back into my heart. Today I am going to believe that I am in fact who and what people say I am.
Bold, brave, fearless, wild.
As Always,
Bethany
Bethany G. Paget 
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